Reddit Chief Executive Resigns as Company Shuffles Top Ranks

Ellen Pao, center, in Reddit’s offices in San Francisco earlier this year. She joined in 2013 to head up the company’s business strategy.Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times

Reddit, the popular online community message board, wants to grow up into a viable business. Now, it is going to try to accomplish that under new management.

The company announced on Thursday that Yishan Wong, Reddit’s chief executive, resigned from his position after two and a half years of service. Ellen Pao, Reddit’s business and partnerships strategist, will serve as interim chief executive, the company said in a statement.

Reddit is also circling back to its roots for future leadership.

Alexis Ohanian, one of Reddit’s co-founders, will return to the company full time as its executive chairman; he will head up marketing, strategy and communications, among other duties.

“There is a long history of founders returning to companies and doing great things,” wrote Sam Altman, one of Reddit’s advisers, in a blog post. “Founders are able to set the vision for their companies with an authority no one else can.”

The exact circumstances around Mr. Wong’s departure are unclear, though in the blog post, Mr. Altman attributed the shift to a dispute over the location and lease of a new office for the company.

“To be clear, though, we didn’t ask or suggest that he resign — he decided to,” Mr. Altman wrote.

But things have been tumultuous at Reddit in recent months. After the company raised a major investment round, Reddit management requested that the company’s global employees relocate to San Francisco or leave the company, according to tweets sent by Mr. Wong.

Mr. Wong also recently had a public argument with a former employee of the site in which he laid out the terms of his former employee’s termination in excruciating detail. That incident, according to people close to the company, made some of Reddit’s current employees uncomfortable.

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Alexis Ohanian, one of Reddit’s co-founders, will return to the company full time as its executive chairman.Credit Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In an interview, Mr. Ohanian said, “Yishan quintupled traffic for us in his two and a half years at Reddit, and that’s no small feat. Ultimately, companies have different needs for different leaders at different times in their history.”

In an e-mail, Ms. Pao described her role as an interim position that may end up as permanent. She will work closely with Mr. Ohanian and Dan McComas, who will lead Reddit’s product strategy.

There is a lot at stake for Reddit. The site, which was founded in 2005, has grown into an Internet traffic powerhouse in recent years, garnering nearly 174 million monthly active visitors. It is a fixture for celebrities to market their recent films and albums, and media sites — including The New York Times — regularly hold question and answer sessions with its users.

But the company has failed to attract the type of revenue it would like. Reddit raised $50 million in venture capital from Andreessen Horowitz, among others, to beef up its attempts at bringing in money. It has also charged Ms. Pao to continue finding other revenue streams, like acquiring and releasing a mobile application, and debuting a crowdfunding site.

In addition, Reddit appointed Dan McComas, who leads Reddit’s gift exchange program, as the company’s senior vice president of product. He and his team will move to San Francisco as a result.